You know you have good friends when you ask them to help you pick sheep poo out of wool and they don’t bat an eye. CoworkerA, Ms. Celery, and NurseK showed up bright and early on Saturday to help me skirt three bags of fleece that had been skulking in my garage for an embarrassingly long time.

The first two bags (the black ones) I knew contained pre-skirted fleeces – one churro and one merino.

The churro was fine except for all of the burrs in it. We decided that this particular sheep must have gone around sitting on every burdock plant it could find.

The merino was pretty good too – not very cohesive as a fleece, but that’s ok.

Then we broke into the third bag. This was the mystery bag. All I knew was that it came from a local museum (not the one I volunteer at), it was supposed to be merino from a not too elderly sheep, it was big, and it was . . . fragrant. Well, as soon as we dumped it out, we realized why it was so big – it was actually two fleeces. Then when we rolled out the first fleece we realized why it was so odoriferous – it apparently belonged to a sheep who had a thing for rolling in poo.

Check out those dingleberries. We were able to salvage maybe a third of it. Luckily, the second fleece from the mystery bag was much better.

Mmm . . . so fluffy. And look at this crimp!

So we ended up with four bags full.

Now I just need to get around to taking them to the mill.

PS: For those who worry about such things, I did wear gloves and a mask.

Flattering, no? I got to wear this lovely circus tent of a wrapper at the Denver County Fair where the Littleton Museum was invited to do a reprise of our fashion show from last year. As I’m not really in a position to wear the wedding dress or bathing costume right now, I got to model the maternity wear and tell the following story:

“My dear husband and I live far out on the prairie where there isn’t a tree to be seen for miles. As you can imagine, this makes finding fuel to heat our house in the winter a bit difficult.

Well, two summers ago, Husband started worrying about this very problem. He knew it would be important to keep the house warm for the coming winter because we had two babes and we were expecting the stork to make another delivery any time. He decided to make the seventeen mile journey to Mule Creek to bring back a load of wood. He left early in the morning, hoping to be back before dark.

Just as the wagon rolled out of sight, I realized that the stork, being an unpredictable sort of bird, had decided to make his delivery that day. We have no neighbors within several miles and no doctor to call so I knew I had to get ready to welcome the little stranger myself.

I drew a fresh bucket of water from our 60 foot well. I laid out the baby clothes, scissors, and everything else I might need. I made bread and butter sandwiches and set out milk for the two older babies and told our dog Rover to watch them.

At about noon the stork left a fine baby boy. It took me some time to get him cleaned up and dressed as I fainted several times, but when Husband arrived home at dusk we were ready to greet him. He was glad to meet his new son and very proud of the big load of wood that he had gathered. This year, I’ve advised him to start gathering wood a bit sooner.”

I didn’t have much time to look around the fair, but I’m looking forward to it next year. It was a smallish fair, but seemed to have a nice mix of all of the things you’d expect at a fair along with some extra special quirkiness because it’s Colorado.